Comment: Six weeks in, has Trump lowered grocery bill?

By Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times

On Jan. 19, the last day of the Joe Biden presidency, I went to my neighborhood supermarket and priced 28 items, including milk, eggs, bacon and potatoes.

Six weeks into the second Donald Trump presidency, I went back to the same store and priced the same items.

Why?

Because during the last presidential election, voters repeatedly complained about the economy and singled out the high cost of groceries.

With good reason.

Inflation is a killer, and anybody who’s gone shopping in recent years is well aware that in a supermarket, your money doesn’t go as far as it once did. Breakfast, lunch and dinner all cost more than they used to.

Trump smartly hammered away at that reality as a candidate.

“A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper,” he said on the campaign trail.

And how long did he say it would take to turn things around?

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day 1,” Trump promised.

You didn’t need a doctorate in economics to know that was unlikely to happen. Markets are more complicated than that, and prices can swing on multiple factors beyond the control of an elected official. But it wasn’t uncommon to hear voters cite the price of groceries as a pivotal issue for them, and among those who said inflation in general was the most important issue, two-thirds voted for Trump, according to one survey.

Trump began backpedaling as soon as he won the election. He said in December that he still believed that solving supply chain issues and drilling on American soil, to bring down energy costs, would lower food prices. But he yanked his Day 1 promise and pointed a finger, saying Biden had driven prices sky high, and, “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. … It’s very hard.”

If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, it might be because after promising in his first term to immediately deliver cheaper and better health care for everyone — a vow Trump ultimately struck out on despite Republican control of Congress — he said, “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”

On grocery prices, Trump’s take was about as simplistic as that of Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, who promised to crack down on price gouging. Generally speaking, supermarkets operate on slim profit margins, and pricing is a byzantine calculus, says U.C. Davis professor Daniel Sumner, who served on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and in the U.S. Department of Agriculture under President George H.W. Bush.

If stores are forced to raise egg prices because of wholesale costs, Sumner said, they might reduce the price of other items on the theory that shoppers have only so much money to spend. If stores keep eggs priced at $5 a dozen even when that means taking a loss, they’re likely to raise prices on other items to make up the difference. As much as possible, though, they like to keep prices fixed on most items.

“The best thing to do is raise consumer incomes,” Sumner said, because the problem “is not food prices, it’s food prices relative to people’s incomes.”

I’m willing to concede that despite Trump’s blown promise of lower prices on Day 1, it’s possible some of his policies might have a role in lowering prices in coming months and years.

Or raising them.

So I’ll check back periodically.

Michigan State professor David L. Ortega, a food economist, said a U.S. president has little direct control over grocery prices, “especially in the short term.”

“The reason there’s been such a sharp rise over the past four years is that a convergence of factors impacted supply and demand, including covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, significant drought, and bird flu outbreaks,” Ortega said, adding that climate change has also had a significant impact on food production.

One way a president can influence prices is to create more stability, Ortega said.

But the opposite is happening, with Trump rolling out tariffs, deportations and cuts to federal agencies that monitor food safety and the spread of viruses.

“Even the threat of some of these policies” can be inflationary, Ortega said, “because companies are scrambling, trying to come up with contingency plans for where they might source produces or find labor.”

Now let’s get back to my shopping spree at a Vons in Eagle Rock. On the campaign trail last August, Trump used groceries as props to make his point about inflation. The items included Cheerios, Land O’Lakes butter, Gold Medal flour, eggs, bacon, bagels, bread, sausage and fruit.

I priced many of those products, and a lot of others. My list included Thomas’ bagels, Dave’s 21-grain bread, Farmer John bacon, Breyers ice cream, Campbell’s chicken soup, Mott’s apple juice, Triscuits, Cheez-Itz, Oreo cookies, Gold Medal flour, C&H sugar, Skippy peanut butter, Classico pasta sauce, Barilla pasta, Lucerne milk, Lay’s potato chips, Lucerne cheddar cheese, Ben’s rice, navel oranges, bananas, iceberg lettuce, and russet potatoes.

Of the 28 items, 24 were the same price, to the penny, on Jan. 19 and March 3. (And by the way, on each visit, I recorded the regular prices rather than the discounted member prices, because the latter did not apply to every item and not everyone is a member). Four items had different prices.

The Thomas’ bagels, six to a bag, went from $5.79 to $5.89.

A dozen Lucerne Grade AA large eggs went from $7.49 to $9.99.

An 8.9-ounce box of Cheerios went from $5.99 to $5.29.

And navel oranges went from $1.29 a pound to $.99.

The total tab when Biden was president – $146.03.

The Trump total – $147.63.

Makes you want to throw eggs, but they’re too expensive.